Of golf and Larry O'Rourke

He was going to write a book about the golf courses of Maine. That’s as far as the idea developed, but he beamed over it.

“There are so many great courses here!” Larry shouted into the phone during one of his many rounds there. “We should do a book about it!”

Larry O’Rourke, our former colleague in the Morning Call sports department, had the most spontaneous brain you could ever hope to meet. It free-flowed thoughts, ideas, ERAs of itinerant pitchers, impressions of baseball play-by-play announcers and loving tributes to shapely women. When that brain found golf, it entered another realm.

He fell for the game at the 2000 U.S. Senior Open at Saucon Valley, where he compiled the daily diary of competitor Allen Doyle. “Allen loved Old Country Buffet,” Larry said after one interview. “Old Country Buffet! Can you believe it?”

After that, Larry bought the shaggiest set of clubs, adding to them with a friend’s occasional homemade driver, and set about breaking 120. His swing was more of an outburst, and he putted left-handed, but Larry just loved his discovery.

We played in the Poconos, Ocean City, Myrtle Beach and Jacksonville, on the day before the Super Bowl in 2005. Larry drove to Jacksonville, playing golf all the way, and did the same on his way home. He became a pretty decent player, fierce in his pursuit of breaking 80. He never did but relished every moment trying.

As an old-school sportswriter (his email address included the word ‘scribe’), Larry dived into the game with notebook in hand. The story he wrote about the Happy Hour deck at Mountain Valley Golf Course in the Poconos made him a favorite son there. The interview he did with a local inventor of a something called a golf-ball launcher was legendary. The book we were going to write about golf in Maine was going to be a best-seller.

Eight years ago, Larry started a golf tournament at Mountain Valley. He called it the Reporters Challenge, and his original intent was to raise money for reporters who suffered through personal tragedies, as well as Lauren’s First and Goal Foundation.

In 2008, after he was diagnosed with ALS (or Lou Gehrig’s Disease), Larry broke down when asking for everyone’s understanding as he shifted his charitable mission to ALS research. Last month's tournament, which he organized and attended while in the late stages of his battle, raised nearly $7,000.

Larry died Wednesday at his home at age 46. Coincidentally, an email arrived to the Morning Call in-box a day later regarding a golf event coming to the Poconos. Mount Airy is hosting an event on the Playboy Golf Tour next month.